160 Effects of the system 



in the landlords and motive in the stewards. Principles without practice 

 failed, as they have failed and will fail. Nor must we lay much stress 

 on the disturbances of the revolutionary period. Had these, damaging 

 though they were, been the effective cause of decline, surely the long 

 peace under the early Empire would have led to a solid revival. But,, 

 though a court poet might sing of revival to please his master, more 

 serious witnesses tell a different tale. In the middle of the first century 

 AD we have Lucan Columella and the elder Pliny. If Lucan's pictures 

 of the countryside peopled with slave- gangs, and of the decay of free 

 population, are suspected as rhetorically overdrawn, at least they agree 

 with the evidence of Livy in the time of Augustus, so far as the parts 

 near Rome are concerned. Columella 1 gravely deplores the neglect of 

 agriculture, in particular the delegation of management to slaves. The 

 landlord and his lady have long abdicated their interest in what was 

 once a noble pursuit: it is now a degrading one, and their places are 

 taken by the vilicus and vilica. Yet all he can suggest is a more perfect 

 organization of the slave-staff, and the letting of outlying farms to 

 tenants. Pliny tells the same woeful story. And while he vents his 

 righteous indignation on the latifundia that have ruined Italy, he also 

 mentions instances of great profits 2 made by cultivators of vines and 

 olives on estates of quite moderate size. But these successful men were 

 not of the social aristocracy: they were freedmen or other humble folks 

 who themselves looked sharply after their own business.^ 



Therefore, when we are told 3 , and rightly, that with establishment 

 of the Empire the political attraction of Rome was lessened, and that 

 the interest of wealthy landlords became more strictly economic in 

 character, we must not be in haste to identify this change with a return 

 of genuine prosperity. That a sort of labour-crisis followed the res- 

 toration of peace is reasonably inferred from the fact that the kid- 

 napping 4 of freemen, and their incorporation in the slave-gangs of great 

 estates, was one of the abominations with which the early Principate 

 had to deal. In a more peaceful world the supply of new slaves fell off, 

 and the price doubtless rose. It would seem that at the same time free 

 wage earners were scarce, as was to be expected after the civil wars. 

 So th* highwayman, probably often a discharged soldier, laid hands 

 on the unprotected wayfarer. After taking his purse, he made a profit 

 of his victim's person by selling him as a slave to some landowner 

 in need of labourers, who asked no questions. Once in the erga- 

 stulum the man had small chance of regaining his freedom unless and 



1 Columella lpraef 3, 12, 13, 20, xuprae/ 8-10. 



2 Pliny NH xvm 41-3 (of earlier times), xiv 48-50 (speculations), xvm 273-4. 



3 M Weber Romische A grargeschichte pp 242 foil. 



4 Sueton Aug 32, Tib 8, cf Seneca the elder contr x 4 18. Later, Spart Hadr 18. In 

 law, Digest xxxix 4 1 2 2 . 



